Anyway, the lighting project is going to involve lots of wiring and fancy fuse holders and relay boxes and weatherproof connectors, and I figured that it would be best to ensure my charging and ground system were in tip top shape. To do that I contacted Shane of Paranoid Fabrications (paranoid56). He sells a Big 3 wiring upgrade, ground upgrades, grounding kits, stickers, and other stuff. Plus he's local to me.
I got myself a custom setup that has an Alternator to Battery line, Battery to chassis ground, battery to transmission ground, and transmission to chassis ground. I guess that reduces resistance or something. I also picked up some stickers because I want to replace my missing Subaru badge with something custom.
So here are some pictures of that whole deal.
A box. With wires:
And stickers:
And an atomic fireball a la Kartboy:
The wiring is all fancy like:
Here is the power wire:
And ground wires:
That's platinum, yo:
Here is the old and busted:
Ewww gross:
New positive terminal that was the nicest one three different pep-boys/autozones had:
Old ground vs new ground:
Installed:
That positive terminal is a little cramped. I'm going to have to figure something else out there.
So is the alternator post:
I'm not quite sure how I'm going to hook up 5 accessory circuits.
You kind of loop that wire around the a/c lines and zip tie it to things:
Lost of room on the ground side:
Although the battery to chassis wire is a little short since a WRX attaches next to the fuse box instead of above the headlight:
Please ignore all my half-assed wiring because it's getting re-done shortly and I don't even have my driving lights on the car.
So the other wire goes to the transmission where the old one was. Zip tie it to the starter lead:
Then I attached the third wire to the pitch stop mount and a lifting loop on the block:
And then installed my awesome rally stickers:
The mini ones go great on my nalgene bottle:
It's been about three weeks so far. Have I noticed any sort of a difference driving? Actually, no. Do I feel that I wasted the $60 total I spent on all this stuff? No. I'm going to have some pretty serious wattage hanging off the front of the car and will probably find a higher amperage alternator to go with it. With this stuff I don't have any concerns about the charging or ground system of the car.
After you subtract the shipping and stickers, it was really only like $45 for nicely crimped 4ga wire, the fuse, and a battery terminal. Of course the cost of materials is much less than that, but it saves you the hassle of tracking down a way to crimp the connections and measuring wires etc. For extra, gold terminals and soldered connections are available.